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tv   Morning Joe  MSNBC  November 20, 2012 3:00am-6:00am PST

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at the top of the show we asked why are you awake? john has your answers. >> i'm up because my boss is a jerk who made me come in early. >> robert, you suck. yes, john. >> we also have william. he's up with a question. would mika say lithuanian or polish vodka is best. >> that's easy. "morning joe" starts right now.
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i'm telling you, willy, you can look at the skyline this morning. you can hear the sweet strains of kiss in the background. today's going to be a big day on "morning joe." >> something's just -- you know what, something happened. you just feel a disturbance in the force. >> something in the air. >> something in the air tonight. >> on a very special "morning joe." >> this is a very, very special "morning joe." ♪ >> you know, i should have actually worn my don johnson, miami vice. right up to here, roll that up, baby. you know what, i don't know if you knew this or not, you should know it because you usually come over, we help the kids down at the orphanage. >> early. >> we go smoke a pack or two.
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then you come to my house for thanksgiving. willy, every thanksgiving at least for the past seven, eight years, what do i wear? >> the don johnson gear. >> yes. >> on thanksgiving. >> traditional thanksgiving garb. >> stuffing with the a corns? >> yes, yes. how did you know? how did you know? where did that come from? >> twitter. >> what's wrong with you? >> willy tweets that. good morning, everybody. we now turn it over to the adult, meika. >> my mother is coming and i just had a mini panic attack. >> she's very tough. >> she carries a chain saw around sometimes inside the house. >> all right. good morning, everyone. >> the david letterman clip. do we have that david letterman clip? >> i love it. >> everybody is getting ready for thanksgiving, right? >> i'm going to clutch a twinkie
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and watch it. >> we love dave. willie, who do we love more than dave? >> nobody. >> nobody. nobody. family members, nobody. dave. dave is number one. >> this is a concept i might capitalize on. >> you know why we love dave so much? because he gives. he's a loving guy. he's a humanitarian. look at what dave -- this is what dave is giving american airlines. >> a major american company is addressing this problem for the holidays. >> do you hate the hassles of holiday air travel almost as much as you hate the tedious, awkward thanksgiving dinner with family? announcing united airlines reluctant traveler service. for a nominal fee we'll book you on a pretend united flight with a plausible flight number, gate number and arrival time you can tell your family. then at the last minute, oh, no, your flight's been cancelled. you wanted to be there, but what can you do? united airlines, we get it. >> oh, no!
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the flight's been cancelled! >> i honestly -- >> that's a premium service you would pay extra for. >> i know it's supposed to be a joke, but it's brilliant. >> i would like actually if we could develop an app that you just carry around. >> cancel. so sorry. >> yes, i'm coming, yes, i would love to be there. okay. okay, i'm getting the ticket now. >> and in washington, washington anchor from bbc world news america, catty kay. >> you don't have to go to britain this year. >> i just came back yesterday. >> and you bought glasses. >> you look great. >> actually you know what, i can see something now. there's a world out there and there are things that you can read on the ipad, not just pictures. it's funny. >> really. >> yeah. changed my world. >> i don't do a lot of reading actually. >> you just wear the glasses for show, joe? >> they make his eyes look bigger. >> what is that thing? >> mika is holding on to some
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object encased in lucite. what is that? >> it's a twinkie. >> it's an embalmed twinkie. louis gave it to me. >> you don't have to do that because they're so preserved, you just leave it on your desk forever. >> you know what, here's another coincidence, when you drop it -- >> same deal. >> it makes the same bounce. >> the real ones bounce, don't they? >> occasionally. >> there is a reason that it possibly might be going out of business and i'm not trying to be mean because there are a lot of jobs at stake. >> we begin with the ongoing fight on capitol hill over the administration's response to the attack on the american consulate. let's go to mika that has nothing to do with health food. >> it's turning into a proxy war
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between senator john mccain and u.n. ambassador susan rice. top intelligence officials say they knew from the beginning that terrorism was involved in the attacks but kept rice's comments vague to avoid compromising future legal proceedings. they knew terrorism was involved but didn't know whether the attacks were planned in advance and they didn't have the suspect's identity. still, many house repub cans are saying he's unfit to succeed secretary clinton at the state department. >> i'm just curious. john heilman, first of all -- >> elizabeth warren. >> let's just say what happened, okay? the president's punch line was al qaeda is on the run, blah, blah, blah. they politicized intel. guess what, white houses do that. i'm not shocked, i'm not stunned. i wish they wouldn't have done it. but how do you protect americans in the future and what happened
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after the ambassador was already killed? but how long has susan rice been in public service, like since her 20s, right? >> a long time. >> so we actually have people on capitol hill that are going to disqualify her based on one "meet the press" performance? i mean if you want to disqualify her, you've got 20 years or so to judge her. >> a record. >> so judge her by her record, that is fair. we all know there are people that like susan rice. we all know there are people who don't like her. she has a lot of critics, she's got a fans. judge her on that. but seriously, do the republicans think this will help her brand? >> they want her to go back on tv and say she was wrong. if every politician had to do that, we'd have a lot of boring videotape to look at. i'm sorry, that's silly. anyhow -- >> the optics doesn't look really good. >> the optics are obviously
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horrible taking on an african-american woman in this way. but beyond that just on the basis of the reporting from nbc news says the intelligence community thought that there was terrorism involved or knew there was terrorism involved but softened the talking points. if that's true, stipulate that's the case. how is that susan rice's fault? how is she the one being hung out to dry for this? the intelligence community and the administration is telling her what she is allowed to say in public. she didn't make those talking points up. she didn't deviate from what she was told to say. she's presenting the administration's public position. now, you can criticize the intelligence community for softening the talking points. if they want to attack that, that seems like a reasonable thing to raise questions about. but how is he personally responsible and how is she by presenting what is the intelligence community's assessment of what is okay to say publicly, how can she be personally unfit for office on the basis of doing that.
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>> i don't know this at home but willie geist is our walking lexus nexus. when people need snap decisions and need to know what am i going to say, a lot of times, like petraus, he had an ear piece here and willie was coaching him. so tell me, willie, just in your head here, how many of these same republicans saying she's unfit for office said that colin powell had to step down with the faulty intelligence leading up to the war in iraq? how many? hold on, hold on, listen to that brain going -- >> i would have to look that up, bii take your point, yes. >> i think it's zero, willie. you told me earlier it was zero. >> that was my first guess, but yes. we've asked senator mccain this
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on this very show. if you believe they knew it was not a spain tontaneous attack, suggests a cover-up. if it was in fact a cover-up, why would the white house cover it up? what's the benefit to the white house of covering that up? i think that's the big question. >> if you leave aside the substance of the issues, which is all very important, confirmation politics are pretty interesting, the personalities involved. the president has to decide whether to nominate susan rice. i think we call think that's his lead choice and then the choice is senator to confirm her. they've got a majority of the senate. the question is, will they filibuster? filibustering the choice of the senator's choice. i can't imagine he's going to be able to sustain. >> again, this is the first big fight. >> yes. >> following an election where republicans got routed. not just among
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african-americans, but among hispanics, among asian-americans. i really wonder, do a bunch of old white guys, mika, want to make their first big battle post election, a battle going up against a younger woman of color? >> well, let's just -- hold on one second. let's just spread it out over two weeks. in the course of two to three weeks, the republicans, i think, are undermining their intellectual credibility because they are attacking two people on both sides of the spectrum for doing their job. it starts with chris christie and ends with susan rice. both people who are literally doing nothing more than doing their job and they have found something wrong with it. >> hold on a second. >> it's stupid. i don't think people fall for it. >> listen, susan rice went out. maureen even said this. susan rice knew the information she was giving was wrong. i don't want anybody to
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misunderstand. >> she was doing her job. >> she clearly knew it was an al qaeda attack and the white house's explanations don't seem to make a whole lot of sense. but, again, do you disqualify. this is all about the secretary of state fight. do you disqualify her for one interview on meet the press, seems shrill. >> what's striking about this, the harsh language of john mccain saying she's unfit to do the job. and the harshness of the president's response. that was -- i thought that was the most interesting bit of the press conference he gave last week when he was clearly really angry about these attacks on susan rice. and speaking to people in the white house afterwards, they're bemused on the politics of this, you're right, joe, to suggest that what are the optics of this? here they are coming out of an election where the very people they need to be reaching out to, younger women, younger single women, and everybody from groups of minority where they would devastate in every single minority group. and their first fight is to take
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on a young black woman. it seems to be -- it seems to people in the white house they don't understand the politics of this. . what the republicans are trying to achieve. that's on the politics of it. but on the substance of it, you're right. she -- way back into the clinton white house, you're right, she has critics and fans. but nobody as far back of her history, no one's suggested she wasn't able to do her job. >> john heilemann. >> let me say two things. she did more than one interview on "meet the press," she did all the sunday shows. i think what she said in every case what she said was that the video was the thing that incited the incidents. and she said that initially that was the cause. and then that those -- that the incident was taken over by extremist elements. she did not -- she left a little bit of wiggle room. she never said al qaeda is responsible. she left some room to suggest this thing had started one way and developed into something else. that's the first thing. the second thing is to go to
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mark's point. >> to clarify for people at home, david petraeus testified this past week, we knew it was a terror attack from al qaeda from the beginning. >> again, she was -- the intelligence community, again, according to msnbc news reporting said they had various reasons they wanted her not to come out and say that. you can argue about what those reasons were. republicans might want to challenge that. but she was acting as a spokesperson for the administration. >> and challenge -- >> challenge the intel community. >> fine, yes. >> if susan rice goes out and says things that the intel community has told her not to say, then she would be called, quote, unfit for office. >> correct, exactly right. and then the second thing is, on mark's point about the filibuster, the administration does have the votes for her. so now you get to the question of, we have moved into this world in the senate where someone stands up and says i'm going to filibuster this. and as soon as they say they're going to filibuster it, people read the votes and we never have a filibuster. put forward a scenario to this
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political nightmare for republicans. senator mccain, you want to filibuster this, we're going to have a filibuster. hold the floor. >> i was going to say, mark haleprin. >> take the white pages -- >> if i'm the white house right now, you know what? i just let this play out. i just let it -- i don't push it. i let them go out there, i let them go -- it's just like the british going in to the lowlands before the nazis counterattack. draw them in as far as you can draw them in and then say, okay, we're going to go ahead and go forward. let the republicans savage their brands for a month, month and a half. say hillary, can you stick around for a while? because i think we're going to let this play out until early spring. >> they're going to say bring it on. >> bring it on. >> david plouffe and his colleagues designing events to show susan rice in a great light. >> the fight for rice events. >> if you're a republican
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strategist today, your smartest thing is to figure out how to talk senator mccain down from filibuster. if they filibuster it and the white house says bring it on. >> this is about as dis -- politically, they might say it's not good politics, but great policy. fine, go ahead and do that, but my gosh -- >> um -- >> we're not minimizing the lack of security beforehand. but the pure politics of it, republicans are putting themselves in a horrible place. >> the reason why, people need to understand what this is all about. as far as saying susan rice is unfit for office, this is about a fight moving forward. >> and again, to go to the substance, what we said on the show yesterday, i believe, is true. to me the bigger questions still are, and senator feinstein said this over the weekend, how is it that the compound in benghazi given there were months they were concerned about the lack of security. how is it it was left unsecured for so long? why did the state department not
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respond to ambassador stevens' request for more security. at the consulate in benghazi. >> that was an important question. >> those are huge questions. >> if susan rice were responsible for ignoring requests, you know what it should be? unfit for office. >> she's not. >> so please, let's not blur -- >> right. >> you know, some political dust up. >> and let's not -- >> with policy -- >> let's not use the public air waves to treat people like they're stupid. senator mccain is using the calls to block the confirmation in the senate where the confirmation would take place. take a listen. >> she should've known better because we now know there was information from classified sources which clearly indicated that this was an al qaeda affiliated attack, as well. and the real issue here is not susan rice, it is before, during, and after the total failures that this administration engaged in, which
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has caused the deaths of these four brave americans. >> no, no, no -- >> no, i believe senator john mccain thinks there's major failures. your point is an important one that the optics of this were terrible. old white guys taking out a young, african-american woman, but john mccain and lindsey graham say this isn't about optics. he may push forward with this. >> the thing is, though, it's about a campaign that they lost. that's what it's about. if it were about policy that mattered moving forward, that's fine, but what susan rice said on the sunday talk shows had nothing to do with the request for more security, had nothing to do with the killings, had nothing to do with policy. it had to do with one thing and one thing only. was the obama campaign involved in cleaning up these comments? so there was no mention of al qaeda actually causing the death of a u.s. ambassador.
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>> and the president of the united states and his press secretary said the same thing. >> yeah. >> why susan rice? katty kay, we're in for a heck of a bruising fight. do you agree with us that the republicans will be playing into david plouffe and david axelrod's hands here? >> yes, and that's exactly what the white house is realizing. on the merits of it, if john mccain was indignant about what happened in benghazi, the person he should've called out was the secretary of state. and so, presumably, the person he should be saying was unfit for office if there was anyone he was going to call out would be at the top of the state department. that's not what susan rice's job was to deal with security in bengha benghazi. >> you all can defend susan rice, but i can't. seriously. >> still ahead, we'll be talking to the "washington post's" eugene robinson. also, author nate silver will be
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here. >> that'll be fun. >> i'm not going to ask for an apology. >> who's the guyen o the right? >> this guy on the right. >> handsome devil. >> he is. senior adviser to open society foundation morton haleprin. >> is he relation? >> distant relation. >> i'm going on one of those websites with the genealogy. >> it's a daddy moment for mark haleprin. up next, speaking of daddy moments, he has women coming up to him all the time -- >> wow. >> -- saying. >> i can't believe you did that. what is the reaction? >> and little kids coming up going, daddy. daddy. and you know what? you know what's damning for him, you don't need the dna test. they all wear these little cheese hats. >> mini cheese heads. >> up next, the only journalist in washington, d.c. that has paternity insurance, jim vandehei. sort of the mcjagger of politico, is he, willie?
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he's got the stories in the playbook, but first here's bill karins with a check on the forecast. i'm not going there with bill because he always says something even smarter back. it hurts my feelings. be careful out there. pack your patience. what's the travel forecast going to be looking like this week? >> yeah, we'll do traffic and weather later. good morning, everyone. sometimes i have trouble following this. here's what we're dealing with, temperatures very cold up in new england this morning and that's about it, get ready for a warm-up as we head toward thanksgiving. i'm full of good news for everyone today. as far as your travel and thanksgiving plans. no problems in new england. the only troublesome weather in the northwest, 100-mile-per-hour wind gusts in the coastline of oregon. serious business there. people did lose power, but they're getting it back on as that storm begins to weaken. notice the middle of the country, enjoy this warm-up, this will be the warmest temperatures you'll see until the springtime.
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we're talking today in the 60s, 70s, possibly even 80 today near dallas. ridiculously warm as we head through this busy travel period. and let me take you through wednesday, the big travel day, the northwest still dealing with some light rain and showers. the eastern half of the country continues very warm, thanksgiving day, really not an issue out there, if you're going to be driving -- we're going to see a few showers around chicago in the afternoon and st. louis, that's not going to rain out any of your thanksgiving day plans. one of the nicest thanksgiving day forecasts i've given in many years. the tree-lighting ceremony, today the crystal goes on top. we're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks. [ male announcer ] introducing the new dell xps 12. part of a whole new line of tablets from dell. it's changing the conversation. ♪
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so, which superfast 4g lte service would you choose, based on this chart ? don't rush into it, i'm not looking for the fastest answer. obviously verizon. okay, i have a different chart. going that way, does that make a difference ? look at verizon. it's so much more than the other ones. so what if we just changed the format altogether ? isn't that the exact same thing ? it's pretty clear. still sticking with verizon. verizon. more 4g lte coverage than all other networks combined. 25 past the hour. time to look at the morning papers.
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federal officials say they've broken up a terror plot in southern california where four men were planning to join al qaeda. the suspects are accused of planning to bomb targets overseas and here at home. if convicted, the defendants could each face 15 years in prison. and "usa today," a study finds people out of work at some point in their career are more likely to have a heart attack after the age of 50. researchers believe individuals laid off or fired are more likely to be at risk than those who left their jobs voluntarily. and mika, you talk about this all the time. the physical impact -- >> and mental. >> that unemployment has because of the middle income. >> on entire families. >> the "los angeles times," humans may not be the only species to experience a midlife crisis. a new study of over 300 chimpanzees and 170 orangutans finds they also suffer -- >> and willie was talking to me about this. >> oh, willie, you're too young.
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>> he did. >> i've got a guy. >> apparently they suffer from a dip in happiness around their mid lives. midlife point of their life span. the study provides new insight suggesting the midlife crisis is driven by biological factors. and now from the "chicago tribune," something that concerns us all. >> yeah. >> americans will buy more than 580 pounds of turkey meat to celebrate thanksgiving, but more than a third of it will end up in the garbage. friends, that's turkey waste we can't afford to have. that's the equivalent of $282 million thrown away, includes $105 billion gallons of waste and water used to produce this turkey meat. >> okay. >> enough to supply new york city for more than 100 days. and when is politico, willie, going to address turkey waste? when? paul mccartney was talking, but we shouldn't eat turkeys.
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>> aren't you glad you stayed with us and didn't go all the way over across the street? >> you don't get this on the "today" show. >> i'm thinking of that turkey water. >> okay. >> the stuff that floats -- >> you ever drank it? >> no. >> i'm telling you what i do, i eat, right, i eat a big meal. >> right. >> i pull up my velour sweats and i run sprints. >> turkey water. >> i start -- >> oh, my god. >> hot. >> hot turkey water. >> hot turkey water tonic. >> that's gross. >> maybe a spritzer. >> no, not that kind of spritzer, i mean the turkey water. >> i know. >> please stop. >> are you not well? are you okay? >> it's so refreshing. >> not anymore. >> go to him. >> grease goes right in the pores. >> jim vandehei, what do you think? >> my face shines for a week. >> it does. >> he's a huge holiday man. >> he does. >> he looks thanksgiving, arbor
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day -- >> boxer day. >> and of course -- >> boxer day? >> boxing day. >> hot turkey water. >> look at that guy. >> good morning, sir. >> you guys are on a roll. >> getting excited about thanksgiving, my friend? >> i'm always excited. >> okay. >> you guys are bringing me down with this turkey story. we call it soup is what that water is that comes with turkey, right? >> turkey water, you can baste yourself in it. >> loves this time of year so much, he named a woman named after the season. >> haleprin, oh, my god, he's going to love you. >> good insider information. >> october vandehei. >> she's special. >> let's get down to business in the politico playbook. the dow had the best day in more than two months yesterday because of a little optimism about some resolution on this fiscal cliff. but you guys are pointing out that democrats are facing some challenges, but not from republicans, but from within their own party. >> yeah, i think a lot of the
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focus has been on how democrats have leveraged and they want to raise taxes on the rich. the truth is, a lot of divisions inside the democratic party over what to do on entitlement reform. you're not going to get republican votes unless you have some changes to medicare into social security. and inside the democratic party, there's a big divide. a third way, which is a group that represents centrist democrats, they're out with a poll of obama supporters this morning that show the vast majority of obama supporters actually support changes to medicare and social security, which puts them at odds with the liberal base of the party in the house and in the senate. and so, the president's going to have to navigate that. he knows it. it was a big part of the grand bargain talks last time around. so i think it's clear there'll be something on medicare and social security, but there might have to be more than a lot of liberal democrats want. >> harry reid's got to get 60 votes in the senate. there are a lot of moderate democrats up for election in 2014. may not be willing to take that vote. >> right. when you're in a place like
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arkansas and running for reelection, it's hard to do it as a liberal democrat or even as a moderate democrat, so you're going to see a lot of democrats aligning with republicans, particularly on the tax question. the tax question's difficult. because even if you want to define wealthy as above $250,000, well, tell that to a democrat who is representing northern virginia, connecticut, or new york. >> yeah. >> where you have a cost of living a heck of a lot higher than it might be in oshkosh, wisconsin, or rural north dakota. these aren't easy questions to answer. >> i've got a quick question for you, you're talking about the democrats up in 2014, and a lot of democrats in the senate are up in 2014. and they're not going to go out there charging going, yes, let's raise taxes. i'm curious, how did claire mccaskill handle the tax raising question over the past year while she was fighting for her political life in missouri? did she promise like the president to raise taxes? >> she was very -- she was skeptical. all the red state democrats, if you're running in north dakota,
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nebraska, missouri, they all handled it similarly. they didn't -- they did not side definitively with the president on these questions. they all said, yes, we're open to tax increases, particularly for the wealthy. they were much more cautious about how broad based those tax cuts would be. and i think that same dynamic -- >> does claire mccaskill now go immediately to the left and do what she did right after the president got elected? and is she now going to be the liberal senator from missouri? is she -- is she chasentened by the fight of her life. >> her election is many years away now and feels obligation to go with the party. democrats at the end of the day will go where the president wants them to go the vast majority. i don't think she would be a safe vote for the obama compromise, but i think a pretty safe vote. i think the people you need to watch are like senator prior in arkansas, up in two years in a red state. those are the votes difficult to get and the democrats that
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republicans will try to target. and, again, the market is factoring in now they think there'll be a deal. i think there can be a deal. i just think these things are so much more complicated than people understand. we've got a great piece on the site that looks at the top ten loopholes, quote unquote, loopholes in terms of how much savings you would get. go on the site and show me one that you think politicians can get rid of. almost all of them are impossible. you're going to get getting the tax deduction from not having to pay taxes on your health care benefits, what about your 401(k) contributions? your mortgage tax deduction, those are extremely politically popular things tough to get rid of. >> we heard about those in the campaign. jim vandehei, thanks so much. we'll let you get back to uncle jamie's hot turkey water minding the stove. >> oh. >> you're making me thirsty. >> he stands over that stove all day on thanksgiving turkey water. coming up, the chicago bears get roughed up by the 49ers on monday night football. both teams playing without their
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starting quarterback. one team looked like it, the other did not. highlights in sports.
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let's go to the video.
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>> you think so? >> hey, let's do some sports. what are we talking? homeland? >> mark says there's a mole. he knows there's a mole in "homeland." >> the "new york post" says. >> who do you think the mole is? do you watch "homeland?" >> yeah, but i'm a couple episodes behind. >> the new york post headline doesn't say is there that mole? >> i understand why. >> i think it's a little guy. the quiet guy. >> which guy? >> i know who you're talking about. >> "the new york post" says the mole is saul. >> it's not saul. >> they say saul's the mole. >> why else would he be cutting kari slack. >> saul wouldn't if i know saul. >> saul is the best, but it's that little guy. >> it's always the little guy. >> the quiet guy. >> the guy who is -- >> actually, you know what, though? since we're all saying it's the little guy, it's probably james gandolfini.
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>> the smoking man. >> how great is he in this show? >> he's great. >> i never fully appreciated him until this program. man, he's good. >> i am telling you, man, that is -- he's one of my favorite characters. >> that scene where he goes to prison to deal with that woman. >> oh, my god. >> you missed that one. did you see that one? no -- >> forget it. >> it's very sad. >> thinking of doing sports for you, willie. >> blows his head right off the shoulders and you're thinking of -- >> the beard. >> it's just matted. >> football match-up between the chicago bears and the san francisco 49ers. >> mika's doing -- >> starting backup quarterbacks because their starters suffered concussions in week ten. in the first -- do you want to do sports? >> look at this collin, the second-year man floats one out there, kyle williams down the sideline, 57 yards, dragged down at the goal line. rolls out, there was a strike to the big fella, that was the
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first touchdown pass of his career. 243 yards and a pair of t.d.s. the other side of the ball, bears' backup jason campbell. >> oh! >> tough night. this proves you can't win without jay cutler. >> that's what people always say about the bears. >> with all six involving 49ers -- he's a beast. 143 yards of total offense for the bears, that's not good. >> why was that lineman just staring at the football. >> thinking it over. >> was he afraid? what's he doing? >> he froze. >> he did kind of freeze. >> 9ers win 32-7, bears now 7-3 tied with the packers. >> willie, aren't -- >> first in nfc north. >> aren't the bears supposed to have the best defense? >> well, the defense was just a sieve last night. >> this kid out of nevada. >> he's good. >> did you notice when he walked on the field, he was so confident. man, he looked like fifth year starter. >> he made himself a lot of
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money last night. if it's not with the 49ers, someone will sign him. >> boy, he is good. >> bad news for the red sox. for the yankees, not just the red sox. how good are the toronto blue jays right now? the american league east getting more competitive yesterday. the jays signed former san francisco giant melky cabrera to a two-year $16 million deal. named mvp of the all-star game, before he was suspended mid season for violating mlb's drug policy. and hours before the cabrera deal, the commissioner's office approved last tuesday's trade between the jays and marlins, so jose reyes, josh johnson and mark burle all going -- >> the red sox need to find a guy who is really good, that has a checkered past, stable, and just stares at pop flies on the last day of the season and just sits there and tries to figure out whether he wants to catch it or not.
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>> there's one guy -- i can only think of one guy. >> you look through the matrix of all of the -- >> yeah. >> pick out a single name. >> political pundits, you're talking about sam stein, but as far as baseball -- >> stares at political pop-up -- >> who are we talking about? >> josh hamilton, by the way. >> josh hamilton, i love it. >> it'd be yours. >> by the way, i hear the steinbrener's man, where there's smoke, there's fire. may be selling the yankees some day soon. murdoch may be buying them.
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to roll over my old 401(k) into a fidelity ira. man: okay, no problem. it's easy to get started; i can help you with the paperwork. um...this green line just appeared on my floor. yeah, that's fidelity helping you reach your financial goals. could you hold on a second? it's your money. roll over your old 401(k) into a fidelity ira and take control of your personal economy. this is going to be helpful. call or come in today. fidelity investments. turn here. all right. at 45 past the hour. look at that beautiful shot of capitol hill in washington, d.c.
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here with us now, white house correspondent, sam stein. sam? >> hi. >> good to have you. >> how you doing, sam, great to see you this morning. >> thank you. >> what thanksgiving plans do you have? >> i'm going to be going home, eating turkey. >> do your parents want that? >> no. they're not going to be there, actually. >> so this works for everybody? >> yeah, exactly. >> not going to be there. >> yeah. i'm going home -- >> time now for the must-read opinion pages. >> mika wasn't interested enough. >> i'm sorry. >> mika doesn't care -- >> apparently we'll talk for ten minutes about turkey water, but not my family. >> we really need to organize things this morning. you all are acting like a bunch of school children about to go on thanksgiving break. >> i guess we are. >> it's the best holiday. >> all right. so senator marco rubio was asked by "gq" how old you think the earth is. alex, can you read the first two or three sentences. >> he says i'm not a scientist, man.
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>> that's good enough. >> first line. >> okay. >> he goes on to answer it more and this must read alludes to it. >> says he doesn't know. so a big republican -- >> marco rubio versus science. one of the attributes of conservatism, at least i understand it is openness to evidence, including scientific evidence and embracing reality. it can be discrediting to a political party as well as religious institutions to stand against or deny overwhelming empirical evidence on any subject. i like senator rubio and believe he has a very bright future. but it seems to me he not only needs to re-think his answer to this question, but come to terms with its larger implications. he and his party will suffer and should suffer if they are seen as agnostic on our standing against science. >> sam stein. >> i agree with that. does anyone disagree with that? >> joe, do you agree with it? >> yeah, i agree with that.
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does the dumbing down process begin immediately when you're running for president. you've got to say the earth is 6,000 years old. >> i think a lot of the -- >> i don't think it's as deep as people think. >> i think even from the people who have a lot of potential like marco rubio have to navigate the complexities of the base of the party and the center of the electorate and knowing what to say about a lot of stuff they're not normally asked about. >> ask me how old the earth is? >> roughly how old is the earth? >> it's older than 6,000 years. faith and my belief in jesus christ as the son of god, they're not inconsistent. they're not inconsistent. >> you are a scientist, though. >> i am a scientist, though. there's no doubt. i teach science at m.i.t. >> it's not that hard. >> no, it's not that hard. people make this so much tougher than it is. i ran in the district that jerry folwell called the most conservative in america. and i said things just like i said right there.
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and i got 90% of the republican vote time and time again. they don't expect you to be stupid. they don't expect you to deny science just because you're conservative and you believe in small government and you believe in god. >> george bush's political skills are underrated. he knew how to navigate -- >> he could do it. >> we've talked a lot about the mitt romney tape where he mentioned the gifts. >> right. >> but another part of the tape that didn't get much attention is how much he disdained the primary process. and i'm sure it's going to be similar on the democratic side. but it seems it took a real toll out of mitt romney and hurt the party in the long run. >> well, it was mitt romney's own fault because time and time again he would never stand up to the craziest 2% in his own party. so he can't blame the primary process, but it does seem marco rubio, a week later is already starting down this path of underestimating the intelligence
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of his own party. >> right. and so you begin to wonder what he going to say on a whole host of other issues. it reminds me of what mayor bloomberg said when he endorsed barack obama after hurricane sandy. he said basically there's one guy that believes in science and one guy that doesn't seem to. and that's a problem for the republican party. do they want to become across as the party that doesn't believe in science? whether it's to do with darwinism or the evolution of mankind, whether it's to do with climate change and denying the science on that. that's something the party's going to have to wrestle with. and if that gets caught up in the primary process and marco rubio already four years out is falling into the trap of having to appease the wing of his party that will drag, you know, where are they going to go in the next election if they keep getting dragged in the primary process to a point where they are unelectable come the general election. >> yeah. and i -- >> people think this is -- they know this is dumb. >> a lot of people believe that this last election was about
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ideology, i don't think it was about ideology. i think most americans oppose central plans, suspicious of a large growing federal government. i think most americans believe that our national debt's too high. they understand the entitlements need to be cut. they understand all of these things, i think a bigger problem is antiintellectualism that has dominated our party over the past four years. >> there are two possibilities of that answer. number one is that he believes that. and that's troubling on its own. or number two, that like mitt romney he's already thinking about what he is supposed to say. mitt romney spent six years doing that, it didn't work for him. if marco rubio's already thinking that way, already thinking about what the base wants to hear, he could be in trouble already four years out. >> billions and billions years old. >> and look at the language of the key interview. sounds very much like somebody searching for his words. i'm not a scientist, man, i can't tell you what the scientists think. i think parents should be able -- >> yeah. >> there's something about the language of this interview that sounds very hesitant. sounds like somebody who is
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trying to work out, what do i say not to get into trouble here? >> what's the correct answer? like 4 trillion years old. is that what scientists say? 80 trillion -- >> 4.5 billion. >> 4.5 billion years old based on -- >> you know what carl sagan would say -- >> i think it's like 4.5 billion. >> yeah. plus or minus. >> based on, again, willie, my teaching up at m.i.t. >> yeah, exactly. >> spreading the knowledge -- >> we've run the numbers. >> we have a computer -- >> with our bookky. >> we've run the numbers. >> sam stein, please stay with us. >> i'll think about it. >> we've got it laid out on an excel spread sheet and it's about 4.5, i think. >> still ahead -- >> what? >> made in the south awards. >> do you hate science and math now? are you against aggregation. >> i love this. coming up, the editor and chief
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of "garden & gun" is here for a show and tell of how southern craftsmanship is alive and well. >> we've got moon shine, lots of gifts. we've got a package -- >> moon shine. >> a bunch of drunk southerners in new york city coming up straight ahead. into their work,
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coming up, eugene robinson
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that's double miles you can actually use! how illuminating. what's in your wallet? let me guess, am i on the naughty list again? ho ho ho! ♪ t.j. tells me this is a chopper shot. thank you, t.j. welcome back to "morning joe." >> it's a postcard. look at that for a second. it looks like a scene from the day after.
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>> yeah. >> welcome back to "morning joe." every block of the show so far and we're an hour into it has been a complete meltdown. let us try to get ourselves together. >> this is going to be different, i can tell. >> get off flickr. >> i just tweeted a picture. this is great, of chris christie and bradley cooper. >> well, that's nice. >> the two sexiest men alive. >> well, thank you. so john heilemann and sam stein are still with us, joining the table. the president and founder of the holdings company ndc partners miles nadal. good to have you back on the show. >> pleasure. >> miles -- >> i'm not done. >> it's good to have you on the show. >> it's always a pleasure to be part of the "morning joe" family. >> thank you, miles. and in washington, pulitzer prize winning columnist yeugene robinson. gene, good to have you onboard,
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as well. can we begin with the fiscal cliff, though? >> if we can say fiscal, we can. >> yeah, i'm trying. i'm trying. you know what? what was that vodka they were offering me during "way too early"? i'll have some. negotiations to avoid the fiscal cliff are still in motion behind the scenes. optimism from lawmakers over the weekend help the stock market reach its best gain in more than two months over hops the automatic tax increases and sequestration can be avoided. still, politico reporting congressional democrats are facing internal riffs between progressives and moderates over key issues like dealing with entitlement cuts and the threshold for raising income taxes on the wealthy. according to a new gallup poll, 65% of americans say the president will seek bipartisan solutions. 48% say the same about republicans in congress. is there any hope? >> yeah, miles, let me ask you,
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the "wall street journal" yesterday saying companies were not going to be hiring because they're afraid they're going to get a hit of higher taxes and spending cuts. on the other side of it we hear that big businesses are concerned no deals will be done. my question -- it's pick your poison. my question is, what -- you obviously hugely influential business person, what concerns you more? >> well, i think both. i had heard that papa johns and another organization said we will not hire any full-time employees until we understand the impact of obama care. number two is -- >> wait, let's stop with number one. i'm hearing this from big companies, i'm hearing it from small companies, and people think this is all about politics. it's all about the bottom line. when i talked to small business owners in pensacola, all my friends i've known for a long time, they're scared. they're like, joe, i'm going to have to keep people below 30 hours a week. close the doors to my businesses, and that means i'm
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going to lose all my best employees. this is happening small businesses, mid-size businesses. >> absolutely. and people don't know the impact. if you can't quantify it, then that uncertainty is causing ceos of companies to just stop and say -- until we understand it, we're not going to hire. the big issue, if you noticed eight of the last ten trading days, the market has been down. people are very worried about the fiscal cliff. i believe that they'll come to a resolution, this is my point of view. but i think we're going to go over. i don't think we'll get it resolved. >> you think we're going over the fiscal cliff. what's the end -- >> as long as it gets resolved in a reasonable period of time, it won't be catastrophic. but this uncertainty is causing all ceos to forego capital expenditures, mergers and acquisition activity, forego investment in plant equipment, and to forego more importantly
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large hiring. the world needs some degree of predictability, and until the fiscal cliff issues don't -- and until something like simpson/bowles is adopted, i think we're in for a very tough period of time. >> miles, just a couple of questions, something you were talking about here, is it too broad brush that some of the same companies concerned about uncertainty are making record profits. >> well, i think some of that may be true, but i think there are small business people that are saying i don't know what the implications are. >> that's fair. i don't know. >> yes. and i think -- and i'm -- i'm not worried about big corporations. they will adopt whatever policies -- and they'll adapt to that environment. and also, keep in mind, 80% of most major corporations, their business is outside of north america. i'm worried about small business.
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i'm worried about mid-size businesses. i'm worried about the start-up businesses that say we are the engine of america. >> mm-hmm. >> you're putting this burden on us at a time where it's very difficult for us to compete in the marketplace let alone with incremental costs or uncertainty. >> so the president, congress faces a real challenge here and it's almost like you've got to thread the needle between -- >> yeah. >> ignoring the debt, which would cause the markets to rebel and moving too aggressively toward higher taxes and big spending cuts that will, again, dampen -- dampen the economy for the next year or two. we've got a difficult road ahead. >> it is a difficult road ahead. i guess my view is it's going to be difficult for them to come to a sort of grand bargain of the kind that we almost got year and a half ago. a deal that really looks ahead
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10 or 15 years. but i think it might be possible to come up with a kind of shrunken version of that that does give people some confidence that congress and the white house can agree on something. to avoid what everybody says is a looming disaster, the fiscal cliff. but i'm in an optimistic mood this morning because tomorrow's -- you know, because we're going into thanksgiving and -- >> right. >> and so i kind of -- >> yeah, that'll do it. >> i feel good about the world in my darker moments it is hard to see how they come to an agreement. >> well, they're already home for thanksgiving. >> gene's feeling depressed, we can always get him some turkey water. >> thanks for the thought. the thought is always appreciated, turkey water, but not for me. >> so, again, a bit of breaking news here. it's for the people that certainly watch this show and follow politics, alan west has conceded now in florida.
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there'd been a two-week battle -- >> our long national nightmare is over. >> it's fascinating. alan west loses to a 29-year-old down in florida. he was one of the more combative republicans. >> some would say crazy. >> let's leave it now. >> we wouldn't say it. >> gone, but not forgotten. >> back, right? >> some also would say crazy there too. >> like i said, meltdown. >> keep a certain lunatic quotient up in congress. >> miles, please. >> if you ask me which poison i would take, i take increased indebtedness in the short-term, but to get the machine moving again and then deal with the other issues about long-term, how do we get more balanced budget? you can't afford, you can't afford for the machine to stop. >> it does seem like the most likely outcome, just from talking to people on both sides of this is they're going to push everything even further down the
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road. but they'll have some sort of bind to get there. john boehner, for instance, wants to do entitlement reform and tax reform in 2013 now. and he wants to have another trigger mechanism to make sure they take place. we're essentially going to have this whole thing happen all over again. the white house is precondition has always been, well, we have to do something before this december 31st. and i have just from talking to people in the white house and democrats and some republicans, it seems pretty likely you're going to see some in tax increases by the end of this year. that's going to happen. they're not going to say, yeah, we'll call it a day. the question is, then, what kind of entitlement reforms you have. and i think the political article got it. there's been pretty bright red lines set around social security. democrats don't want to touch that. >> gene, another battle we're having right now has to do with possibility of susan rice being nominated as secretary of state. it's gotten ugly over the past couple of days. john mccain calling her unfit for office. what's your take? >> well, you know, you've got
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to -- well, i was going to say you've got to wonder what he has against susan rice, but i think we do know she was very critical of john mccain. four years ago. and -- >> give us that background. because there really does seem, again, this isn't so much about benghazi as it is about an attempt to stop susan rice from being the next secretary of state. give us the personal background of susan rice and john mccain. >> well, she went after him in the 2008 campaign. and in a way that he took personally, i think, as john mccain takes a lot of things personally. >> well, she went after him personally. the flak jacket comment and a lot of other things. she attacked him. >> she did. and look, she is not known to -- to suffer fools gladly. she's tough. which in other contexts maybe you would want in a secretary of state. but -- >> exactly. >> while we're on that subject.
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i mean, why is it that women who are, you know, thought of for these offices are, you know, abrasive and rub people the wrong way. and men who are aggressive seem to get jobs like this. >> exactly. you could not have said it any better. >> yeah, well, that's the way it works out. in any event, it's really kind of interesting. because mccain, at least, seems to have drawn this line in the sand and the president reacted very strongly to the criticism about susan rice. it'll be very interesting to see if he feels he's got to nominate her, you know, anyhow. >> the president has to love this, sam. >> yeah. >> the republicans just got pummelled, people of color ran away from them in record numbers. and so the first big fight -- >> is going to be -- >> post election, you're going to have old white guys taking on
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a younger person of color, a woman -- >> and seemingly not liking her because she's tough and feisty and they also don't like elizabeth warren. interesting. >> it's like a replay of the sonia sotomayor confirmation. we sort of underappreciated in the hispanic community and what it meant to see a supreme court nominee from that community. >> my wife works in the white house on oversight matters, so i'm a little bit conflicted here -- >> then you might want to zip it, actually. >> that's kind of awkward. >> i think we can objectively say at this point that the whole battle over her talking points -- there were legitimate intelligence failures that willed up to benghazi. those are legitimate things to look at. and the republicans are doing themselves a disservice by focusing on the narrow political stuff and missing the big part. >> a woman with a couple decades worth of public service, they're
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narrowing it down to one sunday afternoon where she read intel talking points. and as we said last hour, if she'd deviated from the talking points the intelligence community approved. >> she'd be fired. >> unfit for office. >> she's damned if she does and damned if she doesn't at this point. if the president wants to confirm her. i think the fact this has gotten personal, the fact that mccain has been difficult throughout the first four years of the administration, i think he wanted susan rice before, i think he wants her more now. and as mark pointed out earlier, democrats have the votes to confirm this, the only way to stop it is with a filibuster. if i'm the white house, and i'm sure they're thinking exactly this. if senator mccain wants to filibuster, actually filibuster, not say they're going to filibuster and back away. if they want to filibuster this, if i were the white house, i would want that. go ahead, guys, stand up, let's see it. >> could the optics be any
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worse? >> you couldn't pick the worst issue early on in the campaign post campaign to take to the public after what happened to the republicans and the perception toward them. >> yeah. >> yeah. >> i'd like to see senator mccain standing up on the senate floor with the white pages filibuster this nomination. it would be great for the white house. great politics. >> it's great for the white house. >> and not only great for the white house, mika, it goes back to what we've been saying for the last week or two, terrible for the republican party, the republican brand. the republican problems less about ideology, because as i said before, americans are suspicious of centralized government, big government, they understand we have a massive debt. they understand there are a lot of real problems here. >> yeah. >> but so much of it has to do with tone. >> can i just say -- >> a lot of it is tone, but, you know, ideology, separate ideology from policy. policy does have something to do with it.
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and, you know, republicans can't be the party that stands, for example, for a broken dysfunctional health system or health system that doesn't work for 51 million americans. that can't be the republican position. so we have to work on policies. >> hold on. i've got to say, though, on this point, barack obama did not get reelected because of obama care. he did not get reelected because of the stimulus plan. i mean, these are things he didn't even mention in his nominating speech in charlotte. >> they are -- >> it was republican stupidity as much as anything, right? >> republican stupidity played the greater role. i agree. but -- but republicans' stupidity, you know, on some issues, on immigration, on other issues. it was a combination of the two. i'm not arguing with you about americans' ideological suspicion of too much government and that's -- the republican party's got a lot to work with if it can stop being stupid.
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>> hey, gene? >> yeah? >> that is a very big if. >> they can do it. it would be for our country. miles? >> we've got to admit the earth's older than 6,000 years old. >> yeah. >> having trouble doing that right now. >> go ahead, miles. >> i think the issue that mika brought up is a very important one. it's terrible for america what this whole issue -- it's terrible for america that are very intelligent, well-educated, highly competent, ambitious person who is an african-american female is not being promoted based -- and the issue is not about competency, really, it's about political issues. it's at the wrong issue at the wrong time. >> and i'll say something in terms of our society. and where we have come. women are in a different place today. >> no question. >> and like to take a little bit of what you said and what you said, it looks like a bunch of old white men running women out of washington. and you know what?
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look at elizabeth warren. they come back. they come back. we can't just be beaten -- i'm just serious. >> let's run the clip, guys. here's john mccain. >> i will say nothing. >> having concerns about susan rice's fitness for office. >> she should've known better, because we now know there's information from classified sources which clearly indicated that this was an al qaeda-affiliated attack, as well. the real issue here is not susan rice, it is before, during, and after the total failures that this administration engaged in which has caused the deaths of these four brave americans. >> absolutely. >> and, you know -- >> again, so this is my point is that, you know, susan rice -- and this has been stated a lot -- is the u.n. ambassador. her role in the benghazi issue is pretty much nonexistent. she was out there to serve a
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function in the administration. the real failures, again, were in the intelligence community. and the intelligence community looks out was the one that shifted those talking points out of an abundance of caution it appears. if mccain is so angry with what happened, logically he should be looking at what's going on with james clapper or david petraeus, or someone who could've prevented the attack or directly responsible for the talking points post attack. >> or -- >> it seems politically stupid. >> or as we talked about on several occasions in the last two days, they should be focused on the state department and asking questions about why the state department when chris stevens was asking for more security in benghazi, why the state department didn't act on those calls for more help. there are lots of questions to ask here, but they have nothing to do with -- >> but this brings me back to mitt romney and mitt romney, i think, did the same exact mistake they're doing right now, right after the attack took place, the instinct was to go for the jugular, and if you
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stepped back and said what are the real problems here? and made the issue about that rather than whether or not he was sympathizing with the protesters. >> and by the way, with the republican crowd online, the republican crowd on radio, they all followed right in. >> of course. >> they've got to start thinking more strategically if they want to win. and by the way, when i made the point about mitt romney jumping out the next morning after an ambassador been killed holding a press conference and saying they should have stayed back and let the press ask the tough questions of the president instead of giving them a political rabbit trail to follow down. oh, conservatives were just so shocked. how could i say that? you know, i think mark stein with the national review wrote, you know, this long stem winder talking about how -- what a stupid thing that was to say. who was stupid? it wasn't me that was stupid, it was the republican party that was stupid -- >> at least -- >> because you guys kept following the wrong rabbit
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trails and you got killed because of it. you might want to listen to me more in the future. i'm right, you're wrong. >> you weren't stupid on that occasion. >> i'm stupid on a lot of occasions, but i've never been stupid on republican stupidity. at the end of the day, you know what? i like winning and there are a lot of people out there that make a lot of money writing and talking every day. they like making money and i've got no problem with that, but when it comes to politics and my party, i like to win. that's what i do. i wake up in the morning, how do we win today? i want to win. and i want republicans running the republican party that want to win as much as i do. you guys don't want to make money talking and writing, make your money. i don't give a damn, i'm a capitalist, that's good. buy your big houses, your boats, that's fine, i like that stuff. you know what else i like? i like winning. if you're going to be stupid, get out of the way. for those of us who want to win again. >> joe -- >> stupid, stupid, stupid party.
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i need to -- >> miles? >> we've got the turkey water going. >> the last time we were talking, we talked about employment. we talked about the business and fiscal issues that were affecting the longevity of the country and restoring the country back to the great health. did you notice we don't talk about that at all since the campaign at all? everybody talked about we're going to get americans to work. tell me since the campaign finished what have you heard tabled, talked about in any way, shape or form about getting americans back to work. >> heard about susan rice. all right, eugene robinson, thank you. we'll look for your column on "washington post." >> guys, have a great thanksgiving. >> happy thanksgiving to everybody, enjoy, all the best to your health, and family. >> same to you. still ahead, mitch albom
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joins us in the studio. also nate silver. up next, it's a family affair. haleprin's dad foreign policy expert, here to discuss the president's trip to southeast asia and what it means for the global economy. you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks. >> mark looks nervous. americans believe they should be in charge of their own future. how they'll live tomorrow. for more than 116 years, ameriprise financial has worked for their clients' futures. helping millions of americans retire on their terms. when they want. where they want. doing what they want. ameriprise. the strength of a leader in retirement planning. the heart of 10,000 advisors working with you one-to-one. together for your future. ♪
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25 past the hour, a live look at the white house, a beautiful day in washington. >> gorgeous. here it is now. >> by the way, i had a friend text me yesterday. >> yes, yes? >> useless information. what i'm all about. >> you've been full of it this morning. >> this is the first time i can remember, my friend can remember that thanksgiving is going to fall on the same day, the anniversary of jfk's assassination. i don't think that's ever happened. can you remember that happening? >> well, wouldn't it happen every -- >> wouldn't it happen every
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eight years, seven years? >> i'm just saying, i don't remember it happening. >> i think our problem is -- >> a wonderful way -- every segment. every segment since 6:00 a.m. for an hour and 25 minutes has started awkwardly and jumbled. here with us, now, though, to straighten everything out is senior adviser to the open society foundation's morton haleprin, father of -- it is very good to have you on the show this morning. an honor. >> have you noticed mark is just as nervous with his dad here as you are. >> oh. no, no, no, no -- no one's as nervous as i am. >> tell us about your encounter -- >> you know my father. >> dr. brzezinski was trying to pull you to columbia. >> i was teaching at harvard and he was teaching at columbia and trying to get me interested in teaching at columbia. as was the typical thing, he invited me to do a talk and his introduction was the following.
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he said, it's a pleasure to have dr. haleprin here. i have often been accused of being an arrogant young man and so it's a pleasure for me to introduce one. >> that's the way he likes to start things off well, just a shot. just a shot off the bow. >> good recruitment tool. >> i'm sure you felt so welcome. >> the warmth, you know. >> well, that was affection. >> right. >> and joe knows something about my father and the way he expresses affection. >> he called me stunningly superficial on tv. >> yes. >> let's talk about the president's trip to asia. what should we be looking at here? >> i think the white house motivation is mostly about china. i think they see an opportunity to move the burma out of the chinese orbit into an american orbit. of course, they're concerned about the human rights issue. and many people in the human rights community thought it was too soon for the president to go. secretary of state went, that
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was okay. but aung san suu kyi asked him not to come. and the compromise was he didn't go to the new capital. he didn't go there. he went to rangoon to the capital and went to aung san suu kyi's house, and he got some concessions from the burmese government. they released more political prisoners. >> pretty tough talk. he did not measure his words at all when he went there. he talked about human rights, he talked about the rights of women. he talked about a civilian-led government running the military. the president was pretty forceful. >> i think he was. that was the tradeoff. the white house wanted him to go. he knew if he went, he was going to be very tough, and he was. >> explain the significance of this trip being the first trip abroad of his second term and the significance of the region to foreign policy overall, even
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the middle east. >> well, they have decided -- i think early on in the administration that we had not put enough attention into east asia. into asia as a whole. and that, therefore, we should tilt more in that direction. and as the troops are coming out of afghanistan and, of course, now out of iraq, they're moving more military forces into asia and beginning, i think, an offensive to try to pull countries back from feeling they have to accommodate china because we're not going to be there to defend them. >> you know, dr. haleprin, we hate to do this, we're going to throw it over to john heilemann. i know it was tough for you to find out your son was hanging out with a pot-smoking radical. such is the case, it turned out nice for him. >> be polite. >> i don't know how much people know about your background, but, you know, you famously are a civil libertarian of great repute and record. and you also had the experience
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at one point of having your phone tapped by the fbi. >> it was a home phone. >> once the director of the aclu, director of the washington, d.c., we talked about the petraeus scandal, what had gone on there and the fbi investigating that whole thing. when you say that unfold, there were a lot of questions about whether the fbi had gone too far, in terms of what it did. what was your take on that from the civil liberties point of view. >> well, i think it underscored what i think this is a very serious problem i think we have to deal with. our e-mails are not protected. we all think our own information is protected from the government and at least they need a warrant. but the fact is, the supreme court said a long time ago that if your records are in somebody else's possession, at that time, they were talking about bank records. but if your e-mails are at google or yahoo or wherever, in the cloud somewhere, and they don't have to get a warrant. they just go to the company and
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say give us the records and most of the times the companies do give the records. we don't know exactly how they got these records, but it's pretty scary on the basis of somebody saying i got e-mails i was uncomfortable about, the fbi reads every e-mail of a journalist. and i think we're going to have to do something about that. >> it really is unbelievable that you have a personal vendetta, you have a personal relationship, a guy that sends shirtless photos and a woman asks him to start an investigation in the cyber unit of the fbi in days of terror. >> right. >> and like you said, then they start a fishing expedition, paula broadwell's e-mails, then they bust through a wall and start a fishing expedition of the people who sent paula broadwell e-mails and bust through that wall, as well, and
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say we need to check everything to see if national security's not been compromised and find out it hasn't been compromised and then instead of keeping it internal, they then bust through another wall and make sure we all find out about it. shouldn't americans regardless of how they feel about this scandal, shouldn't they be really concerned? and what should congress be forced to do to stop this, to protect our privacy? >> the simple thing is for congress to enact a law that says your personal records whether you have them or your e-mail company has them or your bank has them are your records and they need a warrant under the fourth amendment for probable cause you've committed a crime. >> why won't congress pass that? and why won't the president sign that? >> well, the fbi says it'll make investigations harder, we might not be able to read terrorists' e-mails, make it tougher to conduct white crime investigation. it's almost impossible to get congress to do anything. but i think hopefully this will have educated people and that therefore this may be on the
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agenda. there's a bill on the e-mail part of it that he's trying to push still in a lame duck session. >> it's a false choice, isn't it, to say, you know, we have to have the right to investigate people's personal e-mails about their personal life or else we aren't going to be able to investigate an e-mail that comes to us from afghanistan. >> oh, absolutely. >> it's ridiculous. >> it's a choice we made a long time ago. >> people are secure in their homes and with their property and nobody thought that didn't somehow make it a little harder to do critical investigations. as you know, the whole constitution was based on the notion of curbing government power. >> so we have to do what i always force mika to do and make you uncomfortable and ask your father a question. >> you want me to? >> or tell us something about
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him. >> let's see. >> this is very dangerous. >> how good a son -- >> here's my question, we were talking before about the confirmation fight with susan rice. you know a lot about ph filibusters, how tough would it be to filibuster a nominee? >> i think thomas was filibustered -- >> and they had to withdraw it. >> they were questions about his personal life and whether he was drinking and so on. just to do it on the basis of a policy difference is i don't know of any such case. i would be extremely surprised if in the end of the day they actually carried through on the filibuster. i think at the end of the day, there will be 60 votes for this. even if they do filibuster and i think, you know, they now only need five republicans to get it, and i think they'll have five republicans. >> mika, this has been very instructive. we find out that your father --
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>> yes. >> insults people from the getgo. i told you not to have him on. >> and i found out -- >> phone was tapped by herbert hoover. >> by the fbi. and a damn good thing because people wanted to know what albums mark was listening to. >> 4 years old, 21 months of wiretaps, didn't get a lot on me. >> such a pleasure to meet you. we're so sorry about heilemann being here, otherwise, it was great to have you. coming up, the south rises again, "garden & gun" magazine breaks down this year's list of the best products made in old dixie. editor and chief dave benedetto is straight ahead. all ahead on "morning joe." have a good night. here you go. you, too.
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♪ welcome back to "morning joe." that's the top of the rockefeller christmas tree here at 30 rock. they're getting ready to put the christmasal on t acrystal on to.
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doesn't light up until november 28th. only a week away. a lot of people starting to check out from work and school and get prepared for the upcoming holiday season. and as we go throughout the day today, the worst travel definitely on i-5 heading up through oregon and washington state. we got nailed yesterday, 100-mile-per-hour winds on the coast. right now we're getting the pair of storms. one went inland, the next one has to come through. even with that, gusty winds and showers to the northwest and the airports from seattle to portland are your travel trouble. the rest of the country looks great. ocean storm heading off the east coast. we're going to be fantastic the next couple of days. so the stormy weather in the west, warm air in the middle of the country. check out the temperatures, gorgeous conditions today throughout the heartland. and the eastern seaboard, you'll get that warm-up throughout wednesday and thursday. tomorrow, the only travel trouble in the northwest and turkey day. it's unbelievable that even the northwest improves just some showers there, chicago all the way down to little rock. looks really great for all your
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holiday travel needs. coming up next on "morning joe," a look at this year's best products made in the south. and bourbon is involved and shots will be had. you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks. it's my favorite time of year again and now -- i got a great new way to get deals. it's called bankamerideals, from bank of america.
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were here. you'll recall the editor in chief gave me moonshine at 8:00 in the morning and i drank it. bunny williams hosted folks at her store which is called treage. the only thing yankee about the event was it took place in new york's -- >> bunny williams is great. >> she is. >> great. >> a legend. >> take a look. right here.
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>> that was a great party. susan went. >> susan was there. along with bunny, julia. >> julia reed. i heard her toast was quite something. >> she is a toasting champion. >> with us now to reveal "garden & gun's" award, dave benidetto. >> from the council tool company in north carolina, been around 126 years, hudson bay head. this is the original multitool. if you go in the woods, going camping. >> my mother uses one of these every day for her art. >> you want to give that -- >> swiss army knife. >> if you want to get this for something for christmas. if you've got a friend or neighbor that needs a good ax. >> everybody needs one. >> what else we got? >> whoa, easy there. >> i'm a huge fan of the
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bourbon. >> heilemann's holding it up. show them what they won. >> it's belle meade, you know who lives in belle meade? >> meacham. >> how is this compared to the moonshine? >> it's equally as good. smoother. >> mika, take a sip. is that not great stuff. >> it's good. >> this is -- >> 20% more rye than most bourbons. >> yeah, i'm good. go ahead. >> that stuff is great. if you got a drunk on the list who appreciates -- >> on "morning joe," what they do is eat the food and go -- >> it's great. it has an amazing history. two guys get together find out their grandfather had a distillery. great, great grandfather. they track it down, they revive it. and they use the original recipe and now we have belle meade bourbon, this is good stuff. >> i want to say, i've drunk a lot of bourbon in my time and
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also a lot at 7:47 in the morning. this is the best bourbon i've ever drunk before 8:00 a.m. >> it is. >> this cheese. great cheese comes from an interesting place unknown. >> yeah, from georgia. five years ago the south was not known as a cheese-making hot bed. not even close. the couple leaves atlanta, buys 126-acre farm, never seen a tractor, raising cows, start raising pigs, and they decide to feed the pigs they're going to make cheese and realize, wow, we're not bad at this. >> farm stead cheese from nature's harmony farm. >> if you've got a cheese head in your family. this stuff is great. >> this impressed one of our judges, blew everybody away. >> i don't know what that means, but it impressed me. what else do we have here? >> the duck call things -- >> yeah. >> you're a duck hunter, right? >> that'll scare them away.
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>> sounds like the brzezinski home. >> i don't think that's the idea, huh? >> here's how it's supposed to sound. >> do it the way -- >> i'm a yankee. >> there we go. >> that's the real thing. >> kinney calls -- >> sam stein sounded like the effect -- >> that sounded like -- cutting its head off. >> i'm used to the chauffeur not the duck caller. >> so kinney calls, another great family tradition, his great grandfather made these calls, collectible items now, he's decided to revive the company, started making them himself. >> i guess you guys were down in south carolina. >> yeah, palmetto bluff. >> amazing. >> that looks beautiful. >> the pictures are amazing. but she showed me a bag maker down there that had set it up in the back of a pickup truck. who is this?
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>> you can see those on south by northeast. >> yeah. >> this is matthew cook, company is border state in kentucky. he was a landscape architect i grad school, got tired of studying, decided he wanted to fool around with some leather and make something, started making bags. he was searching for some tools and while in a tack shop found a hoof pick and used that as the latch for his bag. >> fantastic stuff. >> they're beautiful, great. will last you a lifetime like most of all the stuff besides the bourbon. >> what do you want to do next? pick one more. >> let's do the blanket. >> that's beautiful. >> diane nort, nort farms out of virginia. here is a gal who graduated high school. her parents asked her, do you want a car? no 0, she said. i want a loom. she has a flock of sheep. >> that's exactly what i said to my dad. >> she makes only 75 blankets a
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year. great color blocking, natural vegetable dye. just cool things. >> it seems like the obvious combination is the bourbon and the ax. >> one or the other and you're in trouble. >> the ax goes with pretty much everything. >> i'm going to give it to my mom for christmas. >> you should. it's yours. >> your magazine does this every year. i'm telling you, we talked about this being a southern phenomenon, a lot of people in the northeast are starting to pick up on it. >> it's a national phenomenon. it is amazing. new york is one of the i think top ten states in terms of subscription. top five, i think. it's spreading and we're delighted it is. >> fantastic. we love having you on here. susan is having a great time. the issue of "garden & gun" is out next with dave dibenedetto.
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>> if i could get her column, she is doing great. >> what is it about 50%? >> when had they come in, they're excellent. >> when they come in, they're great. don't do that. makes sam nervous. >> we think in the south that bourbons and axes mix. maybe not in this case. not with mika. >> all right, dave, thank you so much. listen, go online and subscribe to the magazine. it's fantastic. we'll be right back on "morning joe." we have a reaction shot. by the way, this bourbon is great, belle meade. look at that picture. >> i'm a vodka girl.
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finally a major american company is addressing this problem for the holidays. >> do you hate the hassles of holiday air travel almost as much as you hate the tedious, awkward thanksgiving dinner with family? announcing united airlines reluctant traveler service. for a nominal fee we'll book you on a pretend flight with a gate number and arrival time you can tell your family. then at the last minute, oh, no, your flight's been canceled. what can you do?
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united airlines, we get it. >> what can you do? >> oh, no. the flight has been canceled. >> i would like actually if we could develop an app that i use and carry it around. >> so sorry. >> yes, i'm coming. i would love to be there. >> it's breaking up. >> i'm getting the ticket now. and then just -- >> halperin, heilemann, and katty kay. >> katty, you don't have to go to burton this year. >> i just came back yesterday. >> yeah. and you bought glasses. >> you look great. >> actually, i can see something now. there's a world out there and there are things you can read on the ipad not just pictures. it's funny. >> really? >> yeah. changed my world. >> i don't do a lot of reading. >> you just wear the glasses for show, right, joe? >> makes his eyes look bigger.
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>> what is that thing? >> mika is hold iing on to, lik some object encased in lucite. >> it's a twinkies. >> it's an embalmed twinkie. louis just gave it to me. >> you may not even have to do that because they're so preserved you could just leave it on your desk. >> i mean, seriously. you know what, here is another coincidence. like when you drop it -- >> oh. >> it makes the same sound. >> there is a reason that it possibly might be going out of business, and i'm not trying to be mean because there's a lot at stake. >> we begin with the ongoing fight on capitol hill over the administration on the attack on the u.s. consulate the in benghazi. to mika brzezinski now 0. >> a fight that's turning into a
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proxy war between senator john mccain and u.n. ambassador susan rice. they say they knew from the beginning that terrorism was involved in the attacks, but intentionally kept ambassador rice's talking points vague to avoid compromising future legal proceedings. they say they knew terrorism was involved, but didn't know whether the attacks were planned in advance and they didn't have the suspect's identity. still, many house republicans are blaming ambassador rice for the administration's response saying she is unfit to succeed secretary hillary clinton at the state department -- >> i'm just curious. john heilemann, listen, first of all -- >> elizabeth warren. >> let's just say what happened, okay? the president's punch line was al qaeda is on the run. >> please, enough. >> they politicized intel. they did. guess what? white houses do that. i'm not shocked. i'm not stunned. i wish they hadn't done it.
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i'm a lot more concerned about how do you protect americans in the future, and what happened after the ambassador was already killed? >> right. >> but how long has susan rice been in public service? like since her 20s, right? >> a long time. >> so we actually have people on capitol hill that are going to disqualify her based on one "meet the press" performance? if you want to disqualify her, you have 20 years or so to judge her. >> a record. >> judge her by her record. that is fair. we all know there are people who like susan rice. we all know there are people who don't like her. she has a lot of critics. she has a lot of fans. seriously, do the republicans really think this is going to help their brand? >> and -- and, before you answer -- >> it is legit. >> seriously, they want her to go back on tv and say she was wrong. if every politician had to do that, we'd have a lot of boring videotape to look at. i'm sorry. that's silly. anyhow. >> the optics, as they say,
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doesn't look good for the republ republicans. >> the optics are horrible taking on an african-american woman in this way but, beyond that, just on the basis of what our reporting is -- the reporting from nbc news says the intelligence community thought that there was terrorism involved or knew there was terrorism involved but softened the talking points. if that's true, stipulate that is the case, how is that susan ri rice's fault? how is she the one being hung out to dry? the intelligence community in the administration is telling her what she is allowed to say in public. she didn't make the talking points up. she didn't deviate. she admits she is presenting the administration's public position. you can criticize the intelligence community for softening the talking points. if the republicans want to attack that, that seems like a reasonable thing to raise questions about. but how is she personally responsible, and how is she, by presenting what is the intelligence community's assessment of what is okay to say publicly, how can she be
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personally unfit for office on the basis of doing that? >> it's her job. >> it's her job. >> by the way, i don't know if people know this at home, but willie geist is our walking nexus -- >> and a human gps. >> people need to know snap decisions, they're on the hill trying to figure out what am i going to do, what am i going to say because i'm here? a lot of times, like petraeus, if you look, he had an ear piece there and willie was coaching him. >> we haven't spoken in a couple weeks. the point stands. >> so you're the walking nexus. tell me how many of these same republicans that are saying she is unfit for office said that colin powell needed to step down after his testimony for the united nations leading up with faulty intelligence leading up to the war in iraq? i'm just curious, how many. >> and wanted him to recant. >> listen to that brain going -- >> i would have to look that up, but i take your point. >> i think it's zero. you told me earlier today it was zero. >> that was my first guess, but yes. my question is to republicans
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and we've asked senator mccain this on the very show, if you believe that they knew it was not a spontaneous attack, they knew it was a terrorist attack and changed the talking points, that suggests a cover-up. they haven't said that explicitly yet, the republicans. they said it's either incompetence or a cover-up. if it was a cover-up, why would the white house cover it up? what's the benefit to the white house of covering that up? i think that's a big question. >> if you leave aside the substance of the issues, which is all very important, confirmation politics are interesting. you have two chooses. we all think that's the lead choice to replace secretary clinton and then the second choice is senator mccain's. they have the numbers to confirm her. the question is, will they filibust filibuster? filibustering the president's choice to be secretary of state, big deal. senator mccain says he'll do it. i can't imagine that he's going to be able to sustain it. >> again, this is the first big fight following an election
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where republicans got routed not just among african-americans but among hispanics, among asian americans. i really wonder, do a bunch of old, white guys, mika, want to make their first big battle post election a battle going up against a younger woman of color. >> well, let's just -- let's hold on one second. let's just spread it out over two weeks. in the course of two to three weeks the republicans, i think, are undermining their intellectual credibility because they are attacking two people on both sides of the spectrum for doing their job. it starts with chris christie and it end with susan rice. both people who are literally doing nothing more than doing their jobs and they have found something wrong with it. it's disturb iing and it's stup. i don't think people fall for it. >> susan rice went out -- >> i want to go to katty. >> susan rice went out, she knew the information she was given
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was wrong. i don't want anybody to misunderstand what i'm doing. >> she was doing her job. >> she clearly knew it was an al qaeda attack. david petraeus knew it was an al qaeda attack and the white house explanations don't seem to make a whole lot of sense but, again, do you disqualify -- because this is all about the secretary of state fight. are you going to disqualify her for one interview on "meet the press"? >> i won't strike you about this is the harsh language of john mccain saying she is unfit to do the job and the harshness of the president's response. i thought that was the most interesting bit in the press conference last week when he was clearly really angry about these attacks on susan rice and then speaking to people in the white house afterwards. they're bemused on the politics of this. you're right, joe, to suggest that what are the optics of this? here they are just coming out of an election where the very people they need to be reaching out to, younger women, younger single women, and everybody from groups of minorities where they
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were devastated every single minority group, and their first fight is to take on a young black woman. it just seems to be -- it seems to people in the white house they don't understand the politics of this, what the republicans are trying to achieve. that's on the politics of it. on the substance of it, you're right. way back into the clinton white house nobody, you're right, she has critics and she has fans, but nobody as far back as her history goes in politics right back into the clinton white house, nobody has ever suggested that she wasn't able to do her job. she is an extremely competent woman. >> john hailman -- >> let me say two things. she did all the sunday shows. i think what she said, and you'd have to go back and review all the transcripts, in every case she said that the video was the thing that incited the incidents and she said that initially that was the cause. and then that the incident was taken over by extremist elements. she did not -- she left a little bit of wiggle room. she never said al qaeda is responsible. but she left some room to suggest this thing had started
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one way and developed into something else. that's the first thing. the second thing to go to mark's point -- >> by the way to clarify for people at home. david petraeus testified this past week, we knew it was a terror attack from al qaeda from the beginning. >> but, again, she was the intelligence community, again, according to nbc news reporting, said they had various reasons they wanted her not to come out and say that. you can argue about what those reasons why. republicans might want to challenge that. but she was acting as a spokesperson for the administration. >> and challenged the intel community. >> fine. >> if susan rice goes out and says things that the intel community told her not to say, then she would be called, quote, unfit for office. >> correct. exactly right. and then the second thing is, on mark's point about the filibusters, the administration does have the votes for her. so now you get to the question of, we've moved into this world, the senate, where someone stands up and says i'm going to filibuster this. and as soon as they say they're
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going to filibuster it, people read the votes and we never actually have a filibuster. put forward a scenario to this political nightmare you're talking about for republicans where the administration says, fine, senator mccain, you want to filibuster this, we're going to have a filibuster. hold the floor. >> i was going to say, mark halperin -- >> take the floor. >> if i am the white house right now, you know what, i just let this play out. i just let it -- i don't push it. i let them go out there. i let them go. it's just like the british going into the low lands before the nazi counterattack. draw them in as far as you can draw them in and then say, okay, we're going to go forward. let the republicans savage their brand for a month, a month and a half, two months. hillary, can you stick around for a while? i think we're going to let this play out until early spring. >> they will be saying bring it on. >> bring it on. >> you can imagine the communications office designing events -- >> actually i think it impacts pep talks. >> if you are a republican
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strategist today, as far as i'm concerned can, your smartest thing is to how to talk senator mccain and senator graham down from filibustering and coming up with an excuse. if the president nominates her and they filibuster and the white house says bring it on -- >> this is about as discordant, again, politically, and of course i'm sure they'll come on and say it might not be good politics but it's great policy. fine. go ahead and do that but, my gosh -- >> we're not minimizing the lack of security beforehand and all the other substantive issues. the pure politics of it, republicans are putting themselves in a horrible place. >> the reason why and people need to to understand what this is all about, it's not what happened in the past. as far as saying susan rice is unfit for office, this is about a fight moving forward. >> and, again, to go to the substance, what we said yesterday on the show is still true. the bigger questions still are, and senator feinstein talked about this over the weekend, how is it the compound in benghazi given that there were months they were concerned about its lack of security, how is it that
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it was left unsecured for so long? why did the state department not respond to ambassador stevens' request for more security? at the consulate. at the consulate in benghazi. those are huge questions. reasonable ones. >> if rice was responsible, then unfit for office. but let's not blur, you know, some political dustup with policy -- >> let's not use the public airwaves to treat people like they're stupid. senator john mccain is leading the calls to block rice's potential nomination where the confirmation would take place. listen. >> she should have known better because we now know that there was information from classified sources which clearly indicated that this was an al qaeda affiliated attack as well. the real issue here is not susan rice. it is before, during, and after the total failures that this
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administration engaged in which caused the deaths of these four brave americans. >> i believe senator john mccain. i believe he thinks susan rice would be a bad choice. your point is an important one. that the optics of this are terrible. old white guys taking on a young, african american woman. others who are challenging would say this isn't about optics. it's about the importance of foreign policy. it's about the importance of where we go next. so he may push forward with this. >> the thing is, though, it's about a campaign that they lost. that's what it's about. if it were about policy that mattered moving forward, that's fine. what susan rice said on the sunday talk shows had nothing to do with the request for more security, had nothing to do with the killings. had nothing to do with policy. it had to do with one thing and one thing only. was the obama campaign involved in cleaning up these comments? so there was no mention of al
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qaeda actually causing the death of a u.s. ambassador. >> and the president of the united states and his press secretary said the same thing. >> yeah. >> so why susan rice? katty kay, i guess we're in for a heck of a bruising fight the president nominates susan rice for secretary of state. but do you agree with us that the republicans with would be playing into david plouffe and david axelrod's hands here? >> yes, and that's exactly what the white house is realizing. on the merits of it, if john mccain was indignant about what happened in benghazi, the person he should have called out should have been the secretary of st e state. that's where the request for more security went to was the state department. presumably the person he should have called would be at the top of the state department. not what susan rice's job was to deal with benghazi. up next, if predictions were like baseball, political predictions, that is, this guy would be batting 1,000.
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"the new york times" nate silver reports there's nothing for predicting elections. >> i would be happy if bill karins was right like half the time. >> well, but what we should do is just sort of confirm that he's correct even when he's incorrect. >> like 94.76398 chance that this forecast -- >> that you are about to hear -- >> is going to be wrong. bill, take it away. >> go ahead, bill. you've never paid attention to what i said instead of yakking it up you would get the forecast correct. let me take you through your thanksgiving day forecast and we are going to be looking very wet in the northwest this morning. i-5, the worst drive in the country. yesterday 100 metropolit-mile-p winds on the coastline of oregon. and now we're watching the they have y rain in green from portland down to eugene and medford and into northern california. seattle, you are looking better today than yesterday.
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but i would keep that umbrella handy. a slug of moisture about to come onshore. the rest of the country is enjoying nearly perfect weather. it's not even that cold. temperatures above freezing just about everywhere. it's going to be an absolutely beautiful afternoon. look at arizona. temperatures in the 80s. texas, upper 70s. we're in the 60s in the midwest and just about everyone else is in the 50s. so very enjoyable tuesday for any of your travel needs and that holds for wednesday, very warm. near record highs the middle of the country. even that rain in the northwest tomorrow shouldn't cause too many problems at the airports and then finally your thanksgiving day forecast, just a few showers in the heartland as a cold front blows through. that's not going to wash out anyone's plans. sees improvement for anyone's day. that new york city macy's day parade. no issues with the float. should be a great show. a shot of a very soggy seattle. yesterday two inches of rain, at least it's dry. currently showers later today. [ woman ] ring. ring.
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oh, look at that shot of the capitol. it's 22 past the hour. wonderful. here with us now creator of the blog are for "the new york times," nate silver. nate is the author of the book "the signal and the noise: why so many predictions fail but some don't." >> well, well, well. >> and it's very good to have you on the show this morning.
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>> it's great to have you here. >> thank you, joe. >> very good to have you here. by the way, we didn't bet because we love humanity too much, and we made a contribution, mika. >> that's nice. >> in nate's name. >> when i talk to friends i have down in new jersey, people, i think, don't realize how devastating the storm was. >> the scope. i still think, looking at pictures last night on facebook, my husband facebooks with channel 7, and i don't facebook, but he was showing me the pictures he was posting on facebook. it is unbelievable still the damage and destruction and the people who were left out in the cold, the people who are hungry from the effects. >> americares does great work. we have a lot to talk about. >> sure. >> the first thing i want to do, before your apology to me -- >> right. it's okay. >> let's sell books.
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>> let's not even bother. don't worry about it. >> let's sell books. what's it about? >> we live in a very information rich world. you think of all the polls we get now and we need better strategies how we sort through the information to find meaning or truth or make good predictions. the book is about that. we talk to people in every field from finance to earthquake prediction about who is kind of taking and making sense of it all. >> so let's talk about the last election. you know, your numbers turned out to be right because the state polls if you waited turned out to be right. i want to ask you about it and we talk about this in our speeches when we go to college campuses or wherever and it seems to me what happened on the right this year was, there's a certain pollster who would come out with a poll. >> sure. >> and then there was a certain website that would put it at the top of the poll. and then there was a certain network that would run that --
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so what we -- what we kept asking chuck todd, chuck, what's going on? you sorted through the polls for the 2010 cycle. you talk about which ones worked, which ones didn't. let's talk about the best polls, first of all, and secondly, why some of the automated polls turned in it great results. >> well, look, most of the major network polls are good. the nbc news/"wall street journal" poll of course. i think that high quality polling really differentiates itself because if you take on a poll, you miss people who have cell phones. you have a third of the population now. and they're mostly younger urban demographic, democrats, so you will under sample democrats if you don't call people who have cell phones and lo and behold, those polls l had a republican bias this year. not because they are evil partisan. if you miss a big chunk of the population that's democratic leaning, you're going to have problems. >> there are assumptions you
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have to make. the thing i kept hearing from republican pollsters, from the romney people, i'm sure you heard it all the time, too, you guys are going plus eight, plus nine -- >> but how do you make those assumptions because gallup just absolutely humiliated themselves because i think they went plus three or plus four instead of plus seven plus eight. >> here is the issue. the best pollsters like nbc, cbs and "the new york times," let the sample tell you by themselves. they're not making any assumptions how many democrats or republicans that didn't put their finger on the scale. just said, well, we seem to be hearing from more hispanics than we did four years ago. a lot of people who are democratic leaning whereas republicans might identify as independents now. instead of making assumptions, it's the best practice when you're doing scientific survey and that worked again this year. >> so tell us what you do and tell us what you did this past year that made you right and a
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lot of other people -- and for the record, i said that obama was going to win. i think it's like a week and a half out you are putting it at like 74%. >> sure. >> and the politician says you never know what will happen just like with baseball. the numbers may look right but certain teams, ballplayers may eat fried chicken and drink beer in the locker room. anything can happen. but talk about what you do. >> what we're really doing is taking the polls. you take an average. that part is simple. translate it into probability so it's the same in a football game. if a team has a field goal lead with five minutes left to play, how often will they win? we're doing it the same way. obama was up by three points in ohio, virginia, iowa, other swing states. and that's usually pretty solid. a chance like a big mistake but it was a 10% chance and not a 50% chance. of course things did solidify for him towards the end. towards the end where you were
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seeing consistently in almost every poll -- >> he bumped back up. >> it looked like people said toward the income, toward the incumbent with sandy, you did see him have more of a cushion toward the end of the campaign. >> you tried to put an impact that sandy had. did you put in one, one and a half points? >> a point, a point and a half. now that we see obama has won by more than three points in the national popular vote and more in some of the states, i think you can say he won the election because of the storm. it made things more comfortable certainly. >> mark? >> so anyone who writes or talks about politics gets criticized these days in one form or another. one thing about politics, we like issues of substance and the importance of the election but we all like who is going to win and look at a lot of polls. there's one strand of criticism that says too much horse race coverage in politics. too much focus on who will win rather than the underlying issues. what do you say to that?
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>> i'm more interested in diagnosing 2016 than benghazi. that's where my bread is buttered. >> thank you for being honest on that. >> yeah. but if you're going to do a horse race, then do it the right way. one reason i like the horse race, it can be more data driven. even now we had a post on 2014, for example, how the history will work against democrats. the house in 2014 because the president's party doesn't do well in midterms. so making all the coverage more driven. we saw, i think, in baseball, where things have come full circle now where the scouts -- you still have scouts, but they know the stats and that makes them better scouts. they know where to add value on top of that. if we can make the baseline for horse race coverage 20%, 50% more data driven then we'll have improvement all around. >> john? >> you follow politics in a pretty thorough way. one of the things to go from what mark was talking about that i find sort of curious is people who often attack horse race
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journalism are also huge fans of your work. how is it that you can reconcile that notion? i mean, to my mind what you do is the purest distillation. it seems people love nate silver at the same time. >> it's like one of these terms that can be used in a pejorative way. everything that's not what i do. horse race journalism. it's bad. >> that's what i said, by the way. what i said. i'm sorry, go ahead. >> i do think you need to get to the essence of the question which is who is going to win and there's truth in advertising. we have probablies up on the side. who will win the house and the presidency? down to three numbers, right? in some ways it's more efficient, i think. and of course you explain how up get there and talking great detail about why we think what we do and why the models we have are coming up with the numbers that they do. but in some ways you stop beating around the bush so much and say here is the distilled
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essence, right. 72% democrats and people in the senate or whatever or 89% odds of winning ohio, et cetera. it makes things easier in a way when people are trying to figure out how to get information. >> and in your book here you have what's called the prediction paradox. the more humility we have about our ability to make predictions the more we can accept we don't know everything, the more successful we can be in planning the future. >> well, and again, i used to play a lot of poker. and as a sports fan, you know as a sports fan you're going to be humbled sooner or later. >> it happens. >> sometimes your team will be upset by number 15 in the ncaa tournament. you get a sense for what the probabilities are and what the odds are and you know you have to make the best bets you can with the information that you have knowing that you're going to be wrong sometimes. a senate race in north dakota we had the democrat with only an 8% chance of winning and she won. a low-profile race.
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that was the same chance we had romney at a 10% chance. >> and, again, it's so fluid. it's like whether it's poker or whether it's baseball or whether it's politics. it's so fluid. if romney had found his voice two weeks out and started becoming the candidate of all candidates, the state polls moved, your probablies mov prob happened. you go into the final week and the president is sitting at plus one or two in a lot of swing states. plus four in ohio. this was one of the more static presidential races we've had. >> it really was. people forget about races like '92. perot going in and out. polls all over the place. in 49 of the 50 states we had the right candidate winning in june. in florida for romney back in june based on the polls. >> isn't that crazy? >> that's how stable it was. we know about 45 states are going to vote so credit for
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predicting vermont or utah of course, right? but it was basically a two-point campaign. if you had gotten really great jobs news, if you had more bad jobs. >> were you surprised by how off the romney people were? mitt romney on election night thought he was going to win based on what his pollsters told him. his wife thought even late into election night they were going to win. are you surprised? >> look, sometimes campaigns put on a certain spin for the press, of course. when i talked to the romney campaign, i thought they had a realistic view of where they stood. maybe they talked to me in a way that's more direct because i'm not going to go out and do a lot of reporting on it, right? i think the pollster there, those guys are pretty smart guys who took a b-minus, c-plus candidate and ran a tough campaign. obama got some of the jobs numbers he wanted late in the cycle. i think the campaign was adequate. was fine.
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it's tough to beat an incumbent as we found out this year and people very often forget even very vulnerable incumbents, harry reid won re-election. >> the book is "the signal and the noise." nate silver, good to have you on the show. >> come back. >> you look nice. do you want to come back sometime? >> yes, thank you. >> do you do football? >> i watch football. >> you do baseball? >> baseball, football, basketball. sports is good. >> alabama/crimson tide. >> against notre dame? pretty hard, i would think. >> i think we can go into the 90s. >> probably not in the 90s. >> you guys were doing so well. okay. up next -- thank you so much. >> and i'm sorry for saying in the 90s. >> exactly. that's what you should say. his new novel debuted number one, mitch albom joins us next on "morning joe."
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"the new york times" best-selling author mitch albom. "the timekeeper." >> mitch. >> a fascinating story.
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tell us about it. tell us about father time. >> well, it seems to me that everybody is so obsessed with time, and nobody has enough of it. we have all the devices that we seem to need to be more efficient. everybody is running out. as i did with the five people you meet in heaven, i tried to take a big idea and do a bit of a magical modern day fable about it. in my story i followed the very first guy to invent time. somebody started count iing and ruined it for all of us. at some point we didn't start time. now we never stop. >> and he's not exactly thanked by humanity for his invention. >> no, he's not 0s, he's punished for counting the minutes and he's sent to a cave where he his to live for eternity listening to all the people complaining about time. >> how they want more time. >> when it seems he's learned his lesson that you're not supposed to count the hours, you are supposed to make the hours count, he's sent back to earth as a father time figure in our year now and sees this world of digital clocks and atomic clocks
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and everybody with a pda. >> and he's given an hourglass. and he has to find two people, very young teenaged girl and a very old, rich tycoon, and he has to teach them the real meaning of time is. and if he does that, he's finally freed from his purgatory. through this i try to make the point that, you know, we are so busy looking at our watch and checking how fast things are going and being more efficient, but we're not recognizing the true value of time is you have to make your decisions and each day count for it. otherwise you could live forever and it won't make much of a difference. >> and we lose the bigger perspective. >> there's a moment where he sort of says to this old tycoon who is thinking of freezing himself and coming back 100 years later when he can have a whole other life because this life wasn't enough for him. let me come back and do it again. and father time figure says you can't do that. there's a reason that your days are limited on earth. and this guy can't understand why. why would our days be limited?
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and the answer is, to make each one of them precious. and when you think about that, it really is sort of a beautiful, tragic equation of life that if we live forever, nothing would really matter because you can do anything you want. you could be a good guy for a million years and a bad guy. you could try anything. but because we have limited time and you never know if today is our last day, what you choose to do on that particular day or all of them together is what determines the quality of your life. >> and it forces you to stop and look at the sunset and realize you are not going to see sun sets for all of eternity. you are not going to get an opportunity to be kind and help people and this comes out of personal experiences for you which sounds sort of familiar with me, my dad passed away a year, a year and a half ago, and it was the first time after it happened i stopped and go, wait a second, i'm not going to live forever. you sit there and you start calculating maybe i have another 20, 30, maybe 40 years but, my
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god, 40 years ago, you know, it's -- >> even that is the map of your life. what's ten years worth or what's 20 years worth? and i went through that with my folks suffering mental health and i'm sure this wasn't what they planned in their later years and you think about your own time and you say, wow, you know, i'm starting to look back on what i've done instead of looking forward to what i'm going to be able to do. >> so sort of a role reversal here but, you know, you are like the king of special messages, seriously. you really help people. do you ever just want to throw it away for five minutes and just sort of, i don't know -- >> i do. >> sports journalism. >> be a sportswriter. >> i saw you eating a hunk of cheese. >> i'm sorry. i've had bourbon. it's the bourbon talking. >> this from a woman eating cheese -- >> and drinking bourbon this morning. >> can i ask a sports question?
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i'm not going to do what i'm entitled here lord over the giants total dominance. i'm not going to do that because i'm kind and generous. i do think we missed an opportunity because mitch albom is here and we just had nate silver. the public champion of mike trout, stat driven baseball geek. mitch just wrote a column the other day saying that miguel ka brother a's victory is a titanic defeat for all people like nate silver. i want you to talk about why the losers -- >> people like nate silver -- i didn't name him at all. >> you said baseball stats. >> i said there's a difference between sort of what you see with your eyes, which we watched all year long with miguel cabrera who delivered in the clutch constantly and delivered an aura around his team versus a statistic of how many times against right-handers with two men on base did a guy hit one to the power alley. >> that's what i mean. >> there's a point at which you can overstatistics anything. >> sometimes lie to us.
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>> where is nate silver? bring him back out. >> who won? >> cabrera. >> did he win by a landslide? >> the thing is it's fascinating this on going debate about numbers versus -- but there's a real sort of break in baseball between these two camps. >> i think it's all of sports. there's a point at which i go back to when you just went to a game and enjoyed watching the game and got into the competition. i didn't mean to own my own team on a piece of paper and that became the shadow game. and so maybe i'm more old-fashioned that way. >> you don't play fantasy sports? >> i do not. >> speaking of timekeepers, mike barnicle just e-mailed and he says hello. >> yes, where is mike, my guy? >> he's sorry he can't be here. >> very nice things to say about the book. >> the new book "the timekeeper. "mitch albom.
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so great to have you on the show finally. up next, business before the bell with brian shactman. twins. i didn't see them coming.
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but that's okay. you're covered with great ideas like optional better car replacement from liberty mutual insurance. total your car, and we give you the money to buy one a model year newer. learn about it at libertymutual.com. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility -- what's your policy? time now for business before the bell. >> he really is a mike trout camp. >> i was in my office throwing things at the tv set. mike trout had as good a season as you could possibly have. as a mets fan, i want mike trout on our team. cabrera is great. >> he's like a baseball savant. do you know my value?
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>> absolutely. >> it's time for business before the bell. i'll take any opportunity i can with cnbc's brian shactman. >> i don't want to go against him on the mvp vote. mike trout is a better baseball player. a busy day here on wall street. i want to touch on a couple of things quickly. housing starts, four-year high, f futures are slightly lower after a huge day yesterday. yesterday, of course, we rallied on some optimism on the fiscal cliff and we sold off 1,000 points since the election and there were some stocks that were pretty cheap. today hewlett-packard which employs 300,000 people hitting a ten-year low. they bought this company out of the uk called autonomy for $10 billion. everybody said they overpaid. it turns out they did. they're alleging that autonomy cooked their books and they're taking an $8.8 billion charge. the other thing that you can chew on is walmart supposedly was going to pay a dividend in early january. they decided to move it into 2012 and pay it right after christmas. the reason they were explicit about it, they don't know what
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will happen after january 1 so they want to give out the dividend. we could see dividend tax rates go from 15% to about 40% and we've seen a lot of special dividends the last couple of weeks and ex inspect to see more and finally, guys, what's wrong with college football? and it's not just that alabama can lose and then two weeks later be back in the national title hunt. the big ten becoming the big 14, maryland going to the big ten and we're expecting today that rutgers will go to the big ten -- >> brian? >> yes? >> phil, brian shactman disagrees with your baseball philosophy. >> he said that on the air? >> he does. you guys should have a chat there. brian? >> wow. >> pretty tough stuff there. >> seriously you're not going to let him do way too early because he disagrees with you? he believes in the numbers. he believes in science. what are you a republican?
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come on. >> a civil conversation. why don't you have one with brian later. >> we're trying to help you out. [ nyquil bottle ] hey tylenol, you know we're kinda like twins. [ tylenol bottle ] we are? yeah we both relieve coughs, sneezing, aches, fevers. and i relieve nasal congestion. overachiever. [ female announcer ] tylenol® cold multi-symptom nighttime relieves nasal congestion. nyquil® cold and flu doesn't.
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look at this. look at this. who can i turn to? what did you learn today? >> a birthday we have not
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acknowledged today. the 70th birthday of joseph biden, the vice president of the united states. >> mr. vice president. >> the greatest president of all time. >> bourbon is just as good at 7:45 a.m. as at 7:45. >> belle meade. i guess meacham makes it in his bathtub. what did you learn? >> sam stein has a lot of strengths, holding his liquor is not one of them. >> he vomits and then he drinks. he vomits and then he drunks. >> we were the first to vomit in a bar. >> flavors for southern cooking and places to go at self by northeast. great pictures. >> and what i learned today is mark is brilliant and his first encounter with dr. brzezinski was about